British Politics and the Political System in the Eighteenth Century

1999 ◽  
pp. 8-18
Author(s):  
Martin Pugh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Politics

Trade Unions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Moments

In assessing the relationship between trade unions and British politics, this chapter has two focuses. First, it examines the role of trade unions as significant intermediate associations within the political system. They have been significant as the means for the development of citizenship and involvement in society, as well as a restraint upon the power of the state. Their power has also raised questions about the relationship between the role of associations and the freedom of the individual. Second, the chapter considers critical moments when the trade unions challenged the authority of governments, especially in the periods 1918–26 and 1979–85. Both of these lines of inquiry underline the importance of conservatism in the achievement of stability in modern Britain.

THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS FROM CULLODEN TO WATERLOO

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW MACKILLOP
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
Supportive Relationship ◽  
British State

This article highlights the present lacuna in the study of politics and political culture in the Scottish Highlands between the battles of Culloden and Waterloo. It argues that this neglect is symptomatic of the contentious historiography that surrounds the Highland Clearances. Yet politics remained a crucial factor shaping landlord attitudes to improvements and their estates in general. Moreover, in contrast to their well-known failure to manage the region's economic and social development, Highland landlords exhibited a sophisticated understanding of how British politics had been reconfigured by the emergence of the British ‘fiscal-military’ state. The region's elites constructed a distinctive and effective political strategy that sought to place the Highlands in a mutually supportive relationship with the British state. Scottish Highland political culture thus offers a useful corrective to recent debates on the ‘fiscal-military’ state that stress either the centre's overwhelming power or the ability of local elites to resist that power. Although the Highlands is remembered primarily for its hostile relationship with the political centre, the region in fact constituted a prime example of the process of mutual accommodation that underpinned the domestic authority of the eighteenth-century British state.

Shintō Shrines and Secularism in Modern Japan, 1890–1945

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-156
Author(s):  
Karli Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Secular Institution ◽  
The Government ◽  
Academic Discourses

From the late eighteenth century to WWII, shrine Shintō came to be seen as a secular institution by the government, academics, and activists in Japan (Isomae 2014; Josephson 2012, Maxey 2014). However, research thus far has largely focused on the political and academic discourses surrounding the development of this idea. This article contributes to this discussion by examining how a prominent modern Shintō shrine, Kashihara Jingū founded in 1890, was conceived of and treated as secular. It also explores how Kashihara Jingū communicated an alternate sense of space and time in line with a new Japanese secularity. This Shintō-based secularity, which located shrines as public, historical, and modern, was formulated in antagonism to the West and had an influence that extended across the Japanese sphere. The shrine also serves as a case study of how the modern political system of secularism functioned in a non-western nation-state.

Tribal Resurgence in the Eighteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem Floor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political System ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The Political

To gauge the usefulness of the term tribal resurgence and to better understand its alleged symptoms—“decline of the bureaucracy” and “breakdown of central government”—it is necessary to understand the context in which it is used, i.e. within the structure of Iran’s political system. Because it is only then that we also may better understand these alleged symptoms, if these actually occurred. Therefore, I briefly outline the main characteristics of that political system, after which I discuss whether the terms “tribal resurgence” and “decline of the bureaucracy” enlighten us as to the functioning of the political system of eighteenth-century Iran.

The Referendum in Britain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Atkinson ◽  
Andrew Blick ◽  
Matt Qvortrup
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Political System ◽  
British History ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Politics ◽  
International Context ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Practical Instrument

The tumultuous Brexit experience demonstrated the potentially immense significance of the referendum to British politics. This episode demonstrated the importance of extensive assessment of this democratic device. One means of gaining greater understanding of the referendum is by considering it in the context of British history, both as an idea and as a practical instrument. This work fills a gap in the existing literature in considering the origins and implementation of referendums in Britain. It considers a number of themes that have arisen in the context of the most recent British referendum (on European Union membership in 2016): the place of referendums within British democracy; their particular application at given times; the reasons they are held; to whom they might and might not appeal and why; their consequences; and their tendency to generate controversy. It addresses the following overarching question: when and why did such votes take place in the UK? It also asks: (from the perspective of Britain) how did the idea of using the referendum develop; what was the significance of the international context for the advocacy and application of this device; how was it perceived; to what extent and how did it come to be incorporated into the political system; and what has been the significance of the referendum; especially from the perspective of the British constitution?

Britain's Foreign Alliances in the Eighteenth Century

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Black
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
British Foreign Policy

One of the greatest problems in the discussion of eighteenth-century British foreign policy concerns the assessment of the influence of the particular character of the British political system. British foreign policy, and thus the country's alliance strategy, was conditioned by the subtle interplay of internal processes, the functioning of her domestic political system, and the international situation. As historians are concerned increasingly to probe the nature of the domestic pressures influencing the formulation and execution of policy, so it becomes more important to define the political, as opposed to constitutional, role of Parliament and public opinion. This is of obvious significance for the study of Britain's relations with her allies. Were these made more difficult as a consequence of the distinctive character of the British political system? There was no shortage of contemporaries willing to state that this was the case. An obvious category of discussion concerned the citing of domestic pressure as a reason why concessions could not be made to foreign powers, both allies and those whose alliance was sought. This was of particular significance when ministries explained why gains made during war could not be surrendered at peace treaties and gains made at the peace could not be yielded subsequently. Their defense of the retention of Gibraltar was based on this argument. Similar arguments were used by British ministers in seeking to persuade allies to do as they wished. Diplomatic pressure on France over the state of Dunkirk or on Spain and Portugal over commercial disputes made frequent use of the argument of domestic pressure.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-248
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Moment ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Other World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Moment

According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Roman trial of Jesus is the origin of Christian Europe’s fissile politics. Yet it seems to have gone unremarked in the literature on Rousseau’s thought that he rejects the Christian political legacy on the strength of his interpretation of Jesus’ Roman trial. Rousseau cites this trial at a critical moment of his Social Contract: “Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom, which, by separating the theological system from the political system, led to the state’s ceasing to be one, and caused the internal divisions which have never ceased to convulse Christian peoples.” Salient in Rousseau’s theory of history is the moment when Jesus testifies to what he calls a “so-called kingdom of the other world” (prétendu royaume de l’autre monde). And when is that? None of Rousseau’s eighteenth-century readers could have failed to hear, in this, Jesus’ utterance before Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). This is Jesus’ world-historical idea which, in Rousseau’s words, “could never have entered the head of pagans”.

The Structure of Electoral Politics in Unreformed England

1979 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political System ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Electoral Corruption ◽  
George Iii

Discussions of the unreformed English electoral system usually revolve around its three major flaws: the control of borough seats in the Commons by individual patrons, the general lack of opportunities for popular participation, and electoral corruption. The standard examples of Old Sarum (for patronage), the election of 1761 (for the lack of participation), and the Oxfordshire election of 1754 (for corruption) have been cited so often that certain bits of disparaging information, such as the 20,000-pound Tory expenditure in Oxfordshire in 1754, are permanently imbedded in the secondary literature and have resulted in dismissals of eighteenth-century popular politics as unworthy of serious consideration. Instead of using such extreme examples to illustrate the depths to which electoral politics could sink, this more systematic inquiry into the nature of electoral politics enumerates both electoral patronage and electoral participation over the entire eighteenth century, and considers electoral corruption in a necessarily more speculative fashion. From this broader perspective, it is clear that the dismissals of popular politics in England before the Reform Act are unwarranted. Electoral politics played an increasingly important role in the political system during the reign of George III, and to neglect its importance is to misinterpret the political environment of unreformed England.

People and Power in British Politics to 1850

2013 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Joanna Innes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Simple Notion ◽  
The Impact

Although British institutions underwent less formal restructuring during this period than those of the United States and France (bar the limited ones instituted by the Reform Acts of 1832) yet there were changes in the way the political system functioned, and significant developments in popular interaction with politics. The people were increasingly perceived as independent actors, throwing up their own leaders, pressing upon governmental institutions from without, and trying to impose their own agendas upon the political classes. This chapter surveys these developments under three heads: voting (encompassing both changes in the impact of voting and demands for extensions to the franchise); petitioning and association. To complicate any simple notion of trends, it also sketches the character of popular political culture at two specific conjunctures, the 1790s and 1840s.

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